I have some of those! Victory!
Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.9-10: The one where they have to save the day with only an airport as resources and the one where Sterling talks them into stealing a technobabble from a chess tournament.
Read (manga): Leviathan vol 1 (Shiro Kuroi): Scavengers investigate a derelict spaceship while reading the journal of one of the schoolkids who descended right into savagery when the ship was damaged.
Written (catgirl): 234 of worldbuilding notes.
Went to the office, ate a Mediterranean-salmon burrito thing, did some work.
Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.8: Conning the Mako.
Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 1 (Aki Irie): A Japanese teenager in Iceland, using his secret psychometry powers to do detective work while his grandpa picks up on the ladies. Lots of Icelandic scenery, people who make the MC’s life difficult, family trouble. By the same mangaka as Ran and the Gray World.
Read (novel): The City That Would Eat the World (John Bierce): In a world where everything runs on the very specific blessings of myriad gods, a god appeared who slowed aging for members of the city watch as long as they were on the walls. A few centuries later, everyone is officially part of the guard and the entire city is walls (except the interstices where the underclass labor and age, but that’s not important) and doing its best to cover the whole world. A disillusioned citizen and an outsider whose home was destroyed by the city’s extractive industries and general capitalist shittiness get stuck taking a god to the West Pole through this bizarre world full of corrupt societies, and doing their best to not suck along the way. There’s a lot of exposition because it’s a very different world, and the main characters are unfortunately straight, but people resisting capitalism is always good.
Written (catgirl): 122.
D’oh, I completely forgot!
Randomly took the day off work, since I was owed a day from working on President Day. Meant to get up and listen in on Friday morning training anyway, but completely failed and ended up sleeping in until I felt bad about not feeding the cats. Then I was moving so I fed myself with Pakistani-Indian Fusion Cuisine, spicy chicken qorma and less-spicy samosas and butter garlic sesame-seed naan. It might have been sufficiently celebratory.
I could possibly have done something useful, but mostly I cleaned up browser tabs, quite a few of which were short stories I had been meaning to read. Watched some TV with Marith, who is sick as well as having no computer. Probably I didn’t catch her cold. I hope my computer didn’t catch anything either.
Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.7: The one with shady funeral home family, where Parker has an honest-to-something feeling.
Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 19 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A bunch of one-chapter stories. Kuro tried to star in one, Rikka played a horrible prank, assorted yōkai caused trouble.
Read (short): “Victory Citrus is Sweet” (Thoraiya Dyer): A spacer who is actually kind of a jerk gets himself and his apprentice in trouble by cutting corners to show somebody up.
Read (short): “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” (Caroline M Yoachim): A future in which the current American medical system is still in place. Story in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure.
Read (short): “When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story” (John Scalzi): Definitely a different spin on the “enough computers together form a mind” trope.
Read (short): “Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor” (Grady Hendrix): Did you want your AI to be useful? Sorry, your timeline stems from the Trump-Musk presidency, you only get a chatbot.
Read (short): “Wikihistory” (Desmond Warzel): Everybody who gets access to time travel does it, then some long-suffering admin has to revert their changes.
Read (short): “In the Forests of Memory” (E Lily Yu): A sad story about an old lady in a cemetery of holographic grave markers, living off the offerings.
Read (short): “Presence” (Ken Liu): A sad story about an emigrant visiting his dying mother in the old country via telepresence.
Read (short): “The Thief of Memory” (Sunyi Dean): What is identity but memory? Also not a happy story, although you can’t blame a desparate teenager for making a rookie mistake.
Read (short): “The Dark House” (AC Wise): A haunted house, a haunted photographer, haunted photographs.
Written (game design): 136.
Does maniacal cackling count?
Went to the office, had the room to myself, ate a Mediterranean chicken burrito, did a little work. Probably didn’t hydrate enough.
Watched (live-action): Leverage 4.6: Elliot saves a small girl from a carnival.
Read (novel): Stars, Hide Your Fires (Jessica Best): A small-time crook from a crapsack world infiltrates an upper-crust ball to pick pockets, but although she meets a cute girl, the upper crust has problems of its own. Very Star Wars setting: blasters and spaceships, but social structures including security procedures are stuck in Three Musketeers era at best.
Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 17 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A different yuki-onna mystery, with extra historical sword school shenanigans.
Written (game design): 104.
Or Pie Day, depending who you ask.
Had another multi-hour customer call, but my suggestion in hour 1 turned out to be the solution as soon as I stepped into the other room during hour 5.
Watched (animated TV): The Dragon Prince 3.8-9: The final battle! Not very well-commanded on either side, but that’s it for the season, and a hook for next season.
Read (novel): Installment Immortality (Seanan McGuire): Another one from the perspective of the babysitter ghost, still fighting the Covenant with all her new restrictions now that she serves a proper god and not the Crossroads. Finally she gets to interact with normal ghosts, which come in a great variety, because this series is all about taxonomy.
Read (manga): Pandora Seven vol 1 (Yuta Kayashima): The only human on a remote island is thrust into adventure when other humans show up to get the power hidden there and it activates and attaches to the heroine. Flying ships, mechanical forests, unethical biotech witches, and human dominance over the other sapient species by means of prophecy should be cool, but it’s not quite there.
Written (catgirl): 184
I ward off the Tooth Fairy with floss and fluoride!
Watched (animation): The Dragon Prince 3.5-7: Humans are the worst, and yet Viren is taking that as a challenge.
Read (novel): Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind (Misa Sugiura): A bullied Japanese-American middle-schooler discovers that she is actually special and goes on an adventure through Japanese mythology. It’s legitimately hard being Momo, some minor anger issues are perfectly understandable.
Read (manga): I read enough that I’m keeping up with my inches-per-week, but it’s part of a huge thick omnibus so I haven’t finished and logged the title yet.
Written (catgirl): 153.
Another one more honor’d in the breach etc.
Did some shopping, but the store failed me. Did some more shopping for cats, which worked better, then tried another shopping with a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, which got me what I was looking for but the bus failed me so I had to carry bags of heavy stuff until my shoulders were sore.
Watched (live action): The Bureau of Magical Things 1-2: An otherwise normal Australian teenager accidentally gets magical powers and has to interact with the magical creatures she can now see, some of whom are extremely obnoxious. A return to the days of less polished special effects, with a female-dominated cast.
Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 1 (Kiyoko Iwami): Girl A is frustrated because her secret (because homophobia) girlfriend B isn’t paying her enough attention and now Girl C has found A’s secret social media account and is stalking her and it’s a huge mess but C is hot and paying attention to A, so I don’t think this love triangle is going to be resolved in a way that is both healthy and satisfactory to all concerned.
Written (catgirl): 198.
As long as it doesn’t need any public funding, I guess.
Had to work half a day, but nothing actually happened until it was already time to hand off to the next region.
Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 8: Another Lockwood plan that should have gotten them all killed, some light betrayal, but everything somehow turns out okay in the end. So much setup for a next season, which I presume will never happen because Netflix.
Read (comic): Rainbow vol 1 (Sunny & Gloomy): A reread from Webtoons, this first volume about a girl with a vivid imagination(?) and a terrible mother goes about as far as I read before. It is very cute, although also kind of dark.
Written (catgirl): Reread from the beginning of the current iteration and made 113 of quick typo fixes and notes on inconsistencies
I thought it was March that stereotypically had wind, but I haven’t flown a kite in decades.
No anime, Marith is feeling poorly.
Watched (live action TV): Lockwood & Co 6: The fancy party episode, now with more mysterious conspirators!
Read (novel): Industrial Strength Magic (Macronomicon): The teenage son of a gadgeteer supervillain and wizard superheroine combines the gifts he got from his parents to get exponentially-increasing magic-gadgeteering power in a post-apocalyptic (or maybe just apocalyptic) world of supervillains and kaiju and sanity-destroying astronomy. There is a potential love triangle, but I think it may be resolved properly (ie, poly).
Read (manga): Dandadan vol 11 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Fallout from everybody getting mugged by aliens in the last volume. Time for training montages!
Written (game design): 115.
Also Working Naked Day, which I did not celebrate. I did eat pizza, however.
Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 5: Ugh, Lucy, did they not teach you situational awareness at ghost-hunter vocational school?
Read (novel): When Gracie Met the Grump (Mariana Zapata): A young woman who is keeping a very low profile has one of the world’s only three superheroes fall out of the sky into her yard. Adventure ensues, but it’s just an excuse for (normal girl-alpha alpha male) romance. There is a terrifying grandmother.
Read (manga): A Sinner of the Deep Sea vol 2 (Akihito Tomi): Punk mermaid meets love-struck mermaid’s boy, and then mermaid politics gets in the way of the jailbreak. I’m rooting for the punk mermaid and the boy’s badass sister, but it’s probably too heteronormative.
Read (manga): When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine vol 1 (Kasai Fujii): Standard opening of the crown prince accusing his fiancee of assorted villainy and dumping her for a different girl, but this time the ex asks the new girl if she really wants to stay with somebody so fickle and so disappointing in bed. She doesn’t, so the two women shack up together and enjoy life (and each other) despite the attempted interference of titled assholes. Not smut with graphic sex scenes, but lots of sex nevertheless.
Written (game design): 127.
Didn’t drink any hot chocolate, because I’m not smart enough, and considering how easy hot chocolate is…
Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 4: Surely there is no way this can go wr- oh.
Read (manga): Yakuza Reincarnation vol 5-7 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Picked this back up after a long hiatus. Our old-fashioned honorable yakuza reincarnated as a fantasy princess finishes dealing with the numerous problems in the city of the dwarves, which of course are a further escalation of the demonic activity in the previous episodes, and moves on to the walking city to get her minion doctored up, which exposes normal corruption but also more information about skill trees.
Written( game design): 253 of rearranging skill lists on the Titanic.
Definitely not legal to commemorate any more.
Wasted my time doing low-level crafting in Shop Titans to get the event tasks that only care about how many of something, not tiers.
Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 3: I thought that plot was going to last longer, but nope!
Read (manga): Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 1 (Itaru Kinoshita, Shin-Ichi Fujiwara): Zookeeping x dinosaurs, with a real paleontologist to make sure the dinosaurs are right. There’s some plot involving the humans and their finances and devotion to dinosaurs, or something, but that’s not really important.
Written (game design): 103.
I like peanut brittle, but See’s is always out of stock of the sugar-free. I hope they haven’t discontinued it
Managed to buy a cat supply, but mostly I was useless and had pizza.
Watched (live action): Lockwood & Co 2: What are the odds that the PCs think there’s a conspiracy and there actually isn’t? Although it’s not like the authorities don’t have perfectly legitimate grounds for quashing them.
Read (manga): Monster Cats vol 1 (Pandania): 4-panel comics about cats crossed with various monsters like gargoyle, slime, sphinx, bedsheet ghost, etc. They are still all adorable cats.
Written (game design): 103.
But it’s Monday the 13th, so apparently stickers are cursed now.
I guess I did a work today. Kind of.
Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 10-13: Of course she had to go into Diyu to resolve things, but resolved they did get, although not to everybody’s satisfaction. Lots of work for building contractors, though. The End!
Read (manga): We Can’t Do Just Plain Love vol 1 (Mafuyu Fukita): He has a complex about women, but also he smells delicious and she has a scent fetish, so she suggests helping with exposure therapy, by which she means banging. Am I too old for smut?
Read (novel): Something Fabulous (Alexis Hall): A dutiful duke, a runaway fiancee, an extremely fabulous twin brother, and a whole lot of other queer characters on a chase across Regency England and through the duke’s feelings. (Everybody else is pretty clear on what they do or don’t want.) No one is shot who doesn’t kind of deserve it, and there is a HEA. Also butt stuff.
Written: 147.
Even if I still counted, seems like a terrible idea.
Did some shopping, got one hair cut, went on a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, was otherwise completely useless. Did go to bed (slightly) before midnight for the first time this year, though.
Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 7-9: Wow, that character just keeps getting more and more untrustworthy. But the truth is coming out, along with more Underworld lore and more boy trouble.
Read (manga): Peach Boy Riverside vol 11-12 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Those guys are everywhere! Also, what is up that one guy? Oh, not what I thought, but still good. Or bad.
Written: 287. Does any of this make any sense? Probably not.
That now seems like National Turn On The Lights Day. Which may be a thing, I guess.
Was on call all afternoon, but the customers were also on vacation. (Obviously there are customers for whom this is not a holiday time, but they mostly in other time zones.)
Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 1-3: A animated Chinese-American girl has to return to small-town Texas, the site of her traumatic past with mysterious fire powers. Chinese mythology and Daoist magic ensue.
Read: The Executioner and Her Way of Life vol 2-3 (Mato Sato, Ryo Mitsuya, nilitsu): Oh, that’s why everybody is scared of the isekai girls. Too bad the power structure created to deal with them doesn’t work any better than other power structures.
Written: 219.
Not that we need x-rays any more, American health insurance is megadoses of ivermectin for everything!
Did not go to the office, did a little work, snuggled some cats.
Watched: The Dragon Prince 3.2-4: Intrigue, betrayal, smooching, body horror, doom.
Read: Girl Squad Volta (Maya Lin Wang): A teenaged girl of mysterious background is sure that her taller, more athletic, more driven friend is the one being hunted by interdimensional magical girls. Action ensues, and at the end, one of them is going to interdimensional magical girl school.
Written: 215.
Because Columbus is deservedly in the Bad Place.
Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 31 (Tomohito Oda): Some romance with a date that went poorly, not as much goofy stuff, Komi wants to study Making Friends at college.
Watched: The Dragon Prince 2.9-3.1: Rewatch, because we didn’t remember what was going on. Not sure if we’ll keep going from here to skip ahead until we get to new stuff.
Written: 303.
Around here, every day is gibberish day in one form or another!
Watched: Murder Drones 6-8: The end! I still have very little idea what was going on, but we did get to see Uzi’s mom (kind of).
Read: Beyond the Reach of Earth (Ken MacLeod): Oh, that’s what the deal with the alien artifacts is. The third book should be exciting.
Written: 167
Another day that should be every day.
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.8: FInal showdown with the biggest villain! Or at least the most antagonistic, the Night Nurse might technically be bigger, and her supervisor definitely is, but they’re also more reasonable. The end! Everything is good for another season, but I guess Neil Gaiman is cancelled for being a sex creep, so apparently there won’t be one. (This is why men should never be allowed to be involved in anything ever.)
Read: ShipCore (Erios909): I don’t think it’s technically litRPG, even though it has large blocks of robotic text in square brackets. Also no magic, unless you count forcefields and FTL travel and dubious nanotech. However, there are also no male main characters.
Read: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 3 (Sekka Iwata, Yu Aoki): Magical girl magitech convention, which you would think would be the best place for a monster attack, but it does take some work to save the day. Also possibly there’s a plot.
Written: 140. I came up with a name, which might not be the most nominatively-deterministic, but that’s okay. People just have names sometimes, even in the superhero genre.
I presume that’s for the US, and every day in Germany is Bratwurst Tag, but maybe they don’t eat bratwursts anymore and it’s a weird historical holdover for Americans. Anyway, I ate all the bratwursts I had a while ago and haven’t bought any more, but they sound really good right now.
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.6-7: I guess when an escape from literal Hell is placed on the mantelpiece in the first episode…
Read: Cosmoknights vol 1 (Hannah Templer): Powered-armor knights “joust” (it’s a melee) to win the hands of space princesses for their sponsors, because patriarchy and classism. A young mechanic who lost her princess years ago runs into some queer ladies who recognize this system as bullshit and adventure ensues. If only they all had the same idea of what to do about the problem…
Read: Fight Me (Austin Grossman): Not directly related to Soon I Will Be Invincible, but a similar superhero universe. A superhero team is assembled from teenagers who got powers and did crimes, drama happens, many years after they have fallen apart and separately retired/gone into hiding/moved to another continent and changed their names, events pull them back together and further drama ensues. It is very much about how being a superhero doesn’t help you get your life together, entirely the opposite.
Read: I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 1 (Kashikaze): A good student is extorted into getting an absentee student to come to school, the absentee student agrees to attend and study in exchange for kisses and possibly other wishes to be granted later, good student doesn’t know what to make of this. It is not a ground-breaking concept even in the smaller world of yuri manga, I’m sure, but I like it anyway.
Written: 205.
But do ebooks count? Iconoclasm and heresy!
Marith got us Chinese food.
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1.5: Poor Jenny. Poor Niko. Poor Charles. No new boy for Edwin, but a cliffhanger about boys.
Read: The Mercy of Gods (James SA Corey): A human colony so lost they don’t even really know they’re a colony is conquered and octomated by surprise aliens and their best and brightest carried off to slavery among alien creatures and alien worldviews. The aliens are pretty alien, as well as extremely inhumane, but the second-rate academic who is the main viewpoint character is starting to figure them out by the end of the first book. Presumably the second book will turn everything upside down, although I’m pretty sure the great enemy will turn out to be [SPOILER].
Read: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (P Djeli Clark): Deranged cult assassins, missing memories, mysterious girls, undead monstrosities, serial killers, a city-wide party, and [SPOILER]. And snark.
Written: 134.
Dinosaurs are the best. Even ones I am not currently eating.
Read: Let’s Do It Already! vol 1 (Aki Kusaka): Not nearly as raunchy as it sounds. She’s a normal modern girl who wants to smooch her boyfriend, he’s the scion of an extremely old-fashioned and rule-bound political family and possibly on the spectrum, their story is not that interesting.
Read: Exes & Foes (Amanda Woody): They used to be best friends until they had a falling-out, they both have terrible parent problems (although hers are definitely worse), now they’re in high school and have both fallen for the new girl. Drama ensues. So much drama. Their friends are very long-suffering.
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 4: Even-numbered episode, no new boys for Edwin. And sadly, although killing a psychopomp may be gratifying in the moment, it’s not likely to stick.
Written: Exactly 100 of poking at individual sentences, but I think I need to throw all this away and go off in a different direction.
Wow, it’s been a long time. It’s also National Intern Day, so obviously I need an intern to make me a hot fudge sundae!
Did go into the office today, ate a spicy burger, did hardly any work, did remain masked around humans and their virus-filled faceholes.
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 3: Edwin’s closet full of milkshakes brings approximately 2/3 of a boy to the yard per episode.
Read: Kaina of the Great Snow Sea vol 1 (Tsutomu Nihei, Itoe Takemoto): Tsutomo Nihei far-future megastructures, this time an atmosphere canopy anchored by giant tentacle-trees. Young man in the last village atop the canopy is surprised to discover there are people on the surface, etc. Not sure what the snow sea is made of that doesn’t automatically solve a water shortage, but I’m sure all will be revealed in due course.
Read: No Man Left Behind (WR Gingell): The actual conclusion, in which many surprising events occur. Some of them are perhaps more surprising to the characters than the reader, being heartwarming when Athelas has given up on his heart.
Read: The Moon on a Rainy Night vol 4 (Kuzushiro): This volume is more about deafness than romance, but they are still adorable.
Read: “The Year Without Sunshine” (Naomi Kritzer): Ordinary working-class people coming together during a near-future climate disaster. It’s the wealthy professionals that go all Mad Max.
Read: “One Man’s Treasure” (Sarah Pinsker): Even when there’s actual magic, rich people abuse it and leave huge messes for poor people to clean up.
Written: 305, some fiction and some adventure notes. After reading an actual Perils & Princesses adventure, I realized I need a doom counter and some wrinkle tables.
I am so bad at this. Have I ever made a friend in my life? How?
Watched: Dead Boy Detectives 1-2: The dead boys are very dumb, but at least their living sidekick is a little better. Also the exposition is clunky, but whatever. It’s a cute show.
Read: The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue vol 5-6 (Makoto Sanda, Isuo Tsukumo): The war is kicking off, excellent time for a multi-chapter flashback to Ao’s past, which I don’t think we were previously very aware was mysterious. But it is!
Written: 256.
An important day for all water-soluble organisms!
I did not do anything even slightly useful today, but I was mostly conscious, just not energetic.
Watched: Helluva Boss 2.9: That was a pretty terrible day for Blitz, but he both deserved it and asked for it. It was also a terrible day for Stolas, who really didn’t.
Read: The Splendid Work of a Monster Maid vol 4-5 (Yugata Tanabe): I thought the undercover maid jobs would go on forever, but no, the story is actually complete in five volumes, everything wrapped up!
Written: Covid.
Really a pretty swell invention, even though I haven’t used one in ages.
Watched: Helluva Boss 2.7½: The Sally Mae-visits-Millie special. A bit of the old ultra-violence.
Watched: Helluva Boss 2.8: Marith is right, the fic writers already watched this episode 377 times in simulation and knew how it was going to go, but that didn’t make it less painful. And Blitz was almost a functional adult for some parts of the episode! (Loona, as usual, was secretly MVP.)
Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.17-18: All the pieces of the doom are converging!
Written: 132.
Yes, it’s the day after Daylight Savings Day, and I wanted to nap, but did not manage to do so. Or maybe I napped very lightly for the whole day.
Watched: Hilda and the Mountain King: Movie between the second and third seasons, following directly from the cliffhanger at the end of the second season which I had completely forgotten until now. Like so much Hilda, appears scary but is wholesome. Kind of.
Written: 114. What am I even doing with this?
Yum, peanut butter.
Did not go to the office, was dumb, did a work.
Watched: Hilda 3.7-8: That was quite a finale! I was not expecting that much backstory or that much adventure or that little Frida and David!
Written: 139.
I actually did eat banana bread today, since I still had some left over from the gaming feast on Sunday.
Fortunately the presentation that got cancelled yesterday was repeated today for the other side of the globe and I only had to skip the team meeting to attend. It was even a little useful, although more sales-oriented than I wished.
Watched: Hilda 3.4-6: A new friend! An old acquaintance! An extremely scary monster, possibly from another genre!
Written: 243.